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Authorities ID mall shooter as Target worker

Posted: Tuesday, May 01, 2007

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A former Target employee who was turned down for a private security license and planned to "cause havoc" was identified Monday as the man suspected of killing two people in a crowded mall parking lot before he was shot by police.

David W. Logsdon, 51, had been stopped by police while driving the car of his next-door neighbor, who police had found dead in her home hours earlier. Police did not say how Patricia Ann Reed, 67, died or if Logsdon was a suspect in her death, but they believed the events were connected.

"David Logsdon had a plan," police chief James Corwin said. "And that plan was that he had been an employee of that Target store and had been turned down for a private security license. His objective was to go to the mall and cause havoc."

Logsdon applied for a private security permit from the police department, but was turned down because he had two outstanding city warrants, police said.

After the officer pulled Logsdon over Sunday, police say he shot the officer in the arm. The officer, whose wound was not life-threatening, returned fire and shattered the window of the gunman's car.

Logsdon drove to the shopping center, fatally shot two people in the parking lot and wounded several others, then went inside the mall where he was killed by police, authorities said.

Corwin said bomb squad crews were also called to Logsdon's home Monday after police reported his house had been "booby-trapped with a self-made bomb." Police ordered a voluntary evacuation of the immediate area, a suburban residential area of lower income homes and apartments.